Five Tips For Small Business Owners Wanting To Scale

It’s not easy establishing your own business and achieving growth is rarely straightforward. That is why there is plenty of advice about how to deal with the growing pains that start-ups and small business face as they seek to scale and expand. Running a business can be exhausting and as small business start to grow, the daily challenges they face start to change. Even if the leadership is highly competent, having good people combined with good technology simplifies business operations and ensures efficiency. Here are a few common misconceptions that prevent companies from achieving their full potential as well as a few tips.

1. It’s all on me

If you are a small business owner you need to accept the fact that you will simply not know absolutely everything about your business and cannot make every decision on your own or run the company on pure instinct. If you try to do this, you will suffer from exhaustion which results in errors that produce failure. This is why you will need to share the load. It is hard for a business owner to delegate especially when you have built the business from scratch. However, as your business expands there simply are too many moving parts to successfully manage on your own. It is not enough to have passion and instinct to run a business, you have to know when to bring in help. This doesn’t just mean adding new employees, it could also mean deploying technology which will allow your company to scale such as VoIP.

2. Customer data is king

All companies no matter what their size or which industry they are in depend on data. You should be analysing your customer data to identify trends and get a better understanding of their needs. You should also avoid falling into the trap of believing that customer data is all you need to run your business. You should also be looking at operational data as well. If you combine both, you will get an overarching view of how your business is running and will be able to identify where the inefficiencies lie.

3. Disruption won’t affect me

A lot of small business owners believe that their size makes them immune to disruption. This could not be further from the truth. No one is safe from disruption and the worst assumption a small business owner can make is that your services will always be in demand.

4. Don’t let short term success fool you

When you experience a lot of growth it is easy to assume that growth will continue. You should not take that for granted and in fact that is rarely the case. In order to maintain growth, you have to pay constant attention and never take your foot of that accelerator. You may feel tempted to relax as you experience success but standing still is no different from going backwards.

5. You have to be big to go global

Many small business owners don’t scale up because they believe they should only cater to their local market and leave the rest of the world to larger companies. Today technology has made it possible for a company of any size to operate globally and to compete with the big brands. If you truly wish to scale your business you need to find out where the new opportunities lie and exploit them no matter where they are.